Lewis Hamilton says he’s hoping to have a “real race” with team mate Nico Rosberg at Silverstone after they each suffered a problem in the last two British GPs.

Hamilton had a tyre failure in 2013, while last year Rosberg retired with a gearbox problem.

“It’s going to be a very hard weekend for sure,” said Hamilton today. “Nico’s going to be very quick. I can’t say who’s going to be our main competitor this weekend, it could be Williams, it could be Ferrari. I think this weekend is going to be down to getting a good qualifying, and really just extracting the most from it in the race.

“The last couple of years I’ve not really done spectacularly in qualifying, and one year it’s been difficult for Nico with a car issue and one year it’s been an issue with me. So I’m hoping we’ll have a race where we can actually just fight and have a real race.”

Hamilton said that he didn’t feel a particularly need to have to bounce back after Austria: “I feel really happy with my performance over the weekends, more so than perhaps in other years, where I’ve perhaps been unhappy with the performance at some point. The last couple of races I’ve had some ups and downs, the last one the start made a huge difference.

“The good thing is that from the mishaps, from things that happen, we study and analyse them and often fix them or make improvements to make sure they don’t happen again. And particularly after the last race Nico simulated what happened for me at the start in the car, and found a serious issue that could have affected us this weekend. That’s now been rectified and improved.”

Meanwhile Nico has invited Lewis to join the rest of the Mercedes team for a barbecue in the BRDC campsite tonight.

“Nico’s very kindly invited me as well. I’m staying next door to him as well. Free food is always the best thing!”

Is this all Hamilton can ever say? At every GP he says “it’s going to be a tough weekend” and then the Merc wins. We have several high ranking past and current drivers commenting on how easy the cars are to drive. The Merc is the best car by far. Why can’t he just keep quiet instead of uttering this nonsense.